Individual choices, cooperation and the Global Commons:
Mathematical Challenges in Uniting Ecology and Socioeconomics for a Sustainable Environment

Simon Levin

Princeton University
Moffett Professor of Biology
Director, Center for BioComplexity
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
National Academy of Sciences

Date: March 08, 2007
Location: PSH 152
Time: 3:15-4:30pm

We live in a Global Commons, in which the actions of individuals bear costs for society as a whole. The resources we extract for our own uses are no longer available to others, and the toxicants we discharge affect others. The result of this mismatch between individual actions and individual costs is evidenced in the depletion of common resources, the toxification of the environment, and even the frightening loss of effectiveness of the antibiotics that are so fundamental to public health. In the terminology of economists, conventional markets have failed to restrain our harmful activities, like overconsumption, because those markets do not adequately incorporate the social costs, the externalities.

How can we resolve this situation, and develop patterns of social behavior that hold out greater hope for a sustainable future? What can we learn from evolutionary theory, and how can mathematical approaches improve our ability to devise strategies? Not only individuals and corporations, but also societies and nations, act in their own selfish interest, leading to problems for the biosphere as a whole. This lecture will explore how, and under what conditions, cooperation and altruism have arisen in the process of evolution; why social norms, including punishment, have arisen to reinforce socially beneficial behavior; and how those social norms can lead to inter-group conflicts. Attention will be addressed to the socioeconomic systems in which environmental management is based, and ask what lessons can be learned from our examination of natural systems, and how we can modify social norms to achieve global cooperation in managing our common future.